bobdina
08-10-2009, 12:34 PM
JTACs: Going after the bad guys
Vital link in ground operation to draw out enemy
By Erik Holmes - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Aug 10, 2009 10:32:31 EDT
NANGALAM, Afghanistan — Tech. Sgt. Joel McPherson eyed the boulder-covered hills warily, knowing they weren’t as peaceful as they looked.
The Taliban and al-Qaida were up there somewhere, and lately they had been itching for a fight.
“They know we’re coming,” McPherson said. “We’re pretty sure we’re going to get contact.”
A joint terminal attack controller, McPherson was headed with another airman and two platoons of U.S. and Afghan soldiers to meet with the elders of Qatar Kala, a village in the remote Watapur Valley of eastern Afghanistan, less than 20 miles from the Pakistan border.
The troops expected to be attacked after the meeting, when they were headed back to Combat Outpost Honaker-Miracle, a little more than two miles from the village.
They would be bait, luring the enemy to shoot and expose its position, explained Capt. Shaun Conlin, commander of Charlie Company, 2-12 Infantry Regiment.
What the enemy — Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaida, locals and foreign fighters — didn’t know was that soldiers and airmen were hiding on the mountains, too.
A small contingent from the company’s 3rd Platoon, accompanied by an Air Force tactical air control party team led by Staff Sgt. Clinton Herbison, had climbed 3,000 feet the night before to keep watch from a ridge on the west side of the valley. On the east side was a group from 1st Platoon.
Their job was to spot the enemy when they started shooting, and direct counterattacks on their positions.
“It’s not too often that we get to … go after the bad guys,” said Army 1st Lt. Eric Bruns, the company’s fire support officer, in the group heading toward the village. “They usually have to shoot at us first.”
‘The enemy is watching us’
The units staggered their departure from COP Honaker-Miracle. The smaller groups heading for the high ground left first, hoping to avoid detection; 3rd Platoon, accompanied by the TACP Herbison and his partner, left around 11 p.m. on July 28, and 1st Platoon at 3 a.m. the next day. An hour later, the main body of soldiers from 4th Platoon of Charlie Company left with a platoon of Afghan soldiers.
As the men departed the village, dawn was beginning to break and the morning call to prayer from a local mosque echoed across the valley. Women washed dishes or collected water at trickling brooks, and a few men were already tending their small crops of corn and rice.
About a half-hour after 4th Platoon left base, as the soldiers trudged toward the village, two F-15E Strike Eagles flying out of Bagram Airfield, about 90 miles to the southwest, checked in above the valley.
The planes circled overhead, monitoring their Sniper targeting pod video feeds for signs of enemy movement and staying apprised of the mission’s progress through McPherson, the JTAC with 4th Platoon on the valley floor.
An hour passed before the U.S. soldiers and their Afghan National Army partners entered the village, a collection of stone and mud-brick structures arranged around a shaded town square.
Conlin, the company commander, and the Afghan commander made their way to the white-bearded elders, who sat on a stone wall under a tree.
Meetings like this are key to U.S. success here.
Each of the country’s hundreds of remote valleys has a distinct and somewhat isolated population that the Americans and their Afghan allies must approach and win over.
But progress is slow, and troops on their way back to base from these meetings often face pitched firefights.
The elders of Qatar Kala insisted they had no recent contact with the Taliban, but the soldiers suspected they weren’t being truthful. Some of the villagers, the soldiers believed, had told the enemy about the meeting.
The men of 2-12, nicknamed Task Force Lethal, expect to be ambushed every time they walk up a valley — and the mission up the Watapur was no exception, said Lt. Col. Brian Pearl, the battalion commander.
“This in Kunar province is the most kinetic fight in Afghanistan right now,” Pearl said. “That’s just based on the number of engagements and what you see on a daily basis.”
Their expectation was going to prove true.
‘We’ve got eyes on the enemy’
Shortly after arriving in the village, McPherson and Airman 1st Class Tyler Miller, his radio operator and apprentice JTAC, received an intelligence report of four or five groups with about 25 or 30 suspected fighters heading in their direction.
McPherson asked the F-15Es to use their Sniper pods to scan the valley and mountains to the north, where there are suspected enemy encampments. The platoons on the ridges watched with their scopes and binoculars.
“The enemy is watching us,” McPherson said. “They watch us at all times.”
The Afghan soldiers led the way back out of the village, with the U.S. troops close behind. A few minutes later, the men of 1st Platoon began making their way off the eastern ridge.
The F-15s were flying overhead, and Conlin kept McPherson by his side for constant updates on air support and what the aircraft were seeing on the ground.
Every so often, the soldiers would stop and stand in open fields to see if the enemy would fire and show themselves. But there were no shots yet, so the F-15Es checked off and returned to Bagram.
After walking for about a half-hour, the group stopped at a farm and took up firing positions along ancient mud walls. Cows and goats grazed nearby.
McPherson, through his rifle scope, spotted a man sitting on a rock about a half-mile away.
“Hey, captain!” he said. “There’s someone over there watching us.”
McPherson had a gut feeling that the man was a spotter for the enemy but didn’t fire because he couldn’t be sure. The man got up after a few minutes and disappeared into a boulder field.
It was eerily quiet. The farmers who had been tending their fields had disappeared, never a good sign for an infantry patrol.
Then an ominous report came in: An enemy fighter was reported to have said, “It’s time for jihad. Pray for us.”
The first shots rang out a couple of minutes later, at about 8 a.m.
Reports came in that members of 1st Platoon were taking precise rifle and machine-gun fire. They were pinned down in a streambed.
The soldiers who had gone to the village ran 100 yards or so back up the valley and established positions along a wall.
“We got eyes on the enemy!” one of the soldiers with 4th Platoon shouted to Conlin, the company commander.
Two OH-58D Kiowa helicopters overhead opened fire with cannons and rockets, and made several passes on the enemy positions before pulling back. But the enemy fire continued, echoing off the valley walls.
Then soldiers back at base fired several 120mm mortar rounds, which exploded on the hillsides with a deafening roar.
The 1st Platoon soldiers were still pinned down, and Conlin worried aloud that they would begin taking casualties if the enemy fire wasn’t suppressed.
Two French air force fighter jets had checked in to the battle space, and Conlin asked McPherson how quickly he could drop a bomb on the main enemy target.
“I need air, like, yesterday!” he said.
“Understand, sir,” McPherson replied.
It took a few minutes because of the language barrier between the French pilots and the JTAC, but one of the jets dropped a 500-pound joint direct attack munition directly on the target at a little before 9 a.m. It was not clear if the bomb had any effect.
‘Cease fire! Cease fire!
The firefight continued, at times ebbing but then regaining intensity. Bullets whizzed well over the heads of the 4th Platoon soldiers, crouched safely behind a stone retaining wall.
But suddenly shots came from the other direction, snapping by the men and ricocheting off the wall at their backs. Several cursed loudly, and they all got up and ran, scrambling over loose rocks.
Half took cover in a streambed below, and the others dove into an irrigation ditch filled with muddy water. They stayed put for the better part of an hour, knowing they could take crossfire from either direction if they stood up.
The enemy had maneuvered on them, and Conlin suspected they were trying to surround his unit.
On the western ridge, Herbison, the other JTAC, spotted an enemy sniper on a hillside several hundred yards away. A sniper with 3rd Platoon fired but missed. Herbison called in an airstrike from an American F-16 that had replaced the French, but the Army commander called it off to allow AH-64 Apache attack helicopters hovering nearby to enter the fight.
The Apaches fired their cannons and rockets, but the sniper continued shooting at 4th Platoon, forcing the men to run again and take cover as bullets whizzed by them. No one was hit, but one soldier’s uniform sleeve was torn by a passing bullet.
During the barrage, Afghan National Army soldiers and their Marine Corps trainers pushed up the valley and had linked up with 1st Platoon. They returned fire with machine guns and rifles and believed they hit a few Taliban fighters.
About 10 a.m., fire once again came from an unexpected direction — but this time from behind. An Apache appeared to have inadvertently fired its cannon on a friendly position, hitting one U.S. and two Afghan soldiers.
“Cease fire! Cease fire! Cease fire!” Conlin shouted into the radio.
A medevac helicopter flew in from a nearby base, and a quick reaction force with the battalion commander made its way from Honaker-Miracle. The QRF moved the casualties in MRAP vehicles from the front line to 4th Platoon’s position, and the helicopter picked them up from there. The evacuation took a little more than an hour.
The U.S. soldier, a combat camera photographer documenting the mission, lost a leg. The conditions of the Afghans weren’t known. The Army would not comment on the possibility of friendly fire, pending the results of an investigation.
By the time of the rescue, the enemy fire was only sporadic, and the U.S. and Afghan forces began withdrawing from the valley. As they walked out through the cornfields and rice paddies, an F-16 finally dropped a 500-pound bomb on the sniper.
The soldiers were exhausted, and many were out of water. Several had to be evacuated because of dehydration and heat stroke.
They arrived back at Honaker-Miracle about 3 p.m. — 11 hours after 4th Platoon left the gates.
For now, the soldiers let the enemy disappear back into the mountains toward Pakistan. The troops’ reach doesn’t extend beyond the populated valleys, and the mountains still belong to the insurgents.
“That’s their areas, [and] if they want that, that’s fine,” said Pearl, 2-12’s commander. “We’re concentrating down with the population … and people that want change.”
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/08/af_JTAC_080909/
Vital link in ground operation to draw out enemy
By Erik Holmes - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Aug 10, 2009 10:32:31 EDT
NANGALAM, Afghanistan — Tech. Sgt. Joel McPherson eyed the boulder-covered hills warily, knowing they weren’t as peaceful as they looked.
The Taliban and al-Qaida were up there somewhere, and lately they had been itching for a fight.
“They know we’re coming,” McPherson said. “We’re pretty sure we’re going to get contact.”
A joint terminal attack controller, McPherson was headed with another airman and two platoons of U.S. and Afghan soldiers to meet with the elders of Qatar Kala, a village in the remote Watapur Valley of eastern Afghanistan, less than 20 miles from the Pakistan border.
The troops expected to be attacked after the meeting, when they were headed back to Combat Outpost Honaker-Miracle, a little more than two miles from the village.
They would be bait, luring the enemy to shoot and expose its position, explained Capt. Shaun Conlin, commander of Charlie Company, 2-12 Infantry Regiment.
What the enemy — Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaida, locals and foreign fighters — didn’t know was that soldiers and airmen were hiding on the mountains, too.
A small contingent from the company’s 3rd Platoon, accompanied by an Air Force tactical air control party team led by Staff Sgt. Clinton Herbison, had climbed 3,000 feet the night before to keep watch from a ridge on the west side of the valley. On the east side was a group from 1st Platoon.
Their job was to spot the enemy when they started shooting, and direct counterattacks on their positions.
“It’s not too often that we get to … go after the bad guys,” said Army 1st Lt. Eric Bruns, the company’s fire support officer, in the group heading toward the village. “They usually have to shoot at us first.”
‘The enemy is watching us’
The units staggered their departure from COP Honaker-Miracle. The smaller groups heading for the high ground left first, hoping to avoid detection; 3rd Platoon, accompanied by the TACP Herbison and his partner, left around 11 p.m. on July 28, and 1st Platoon at 3 a.m. the next day. An hour later, the main body of soldiers from 4th Platoon of Charlie Company left with a platoon of Afghan soldiers.
As the men departed the village, dawn was beginning to break and the morning call to prayer from a local mosque echoed across the valley. Women washed dishes or collected water at trickling brooks, and a few men were already tending their small crops of corn and rice.
About a half-hour after 4th Platoon left base, as the soldiers trudged toward the village, two F-15E Strike Eagles flying out of Bagram Airfield, about 90 miles to the southwest, checked in above the valley.
The planes circled overhead, monitoring their Sniper targeting pod video feeds for signs of enemy movement and staying apprised of the mission’s progress through McPherson, the JTAC with 4th Platoon on the valley floor.
An hour passed before the U.S. soldiers and their Afghan National Army partners entered the village, a collection of stone and mud-brick structures arranged around a shaded town square.
Conlin, the company commander, and the Afghan commander made their way to the white-bearded elders, who sat on a stone wall under a tree.
Meetings like this are key to U.S. success here.
Each of the country’s hundreds of remote valleys has a distinct and somewhat isolated population that the Americans and their Afghan allies must approach and win over.
But progress is slow, and troops on their way back to base from these meetings often face pitched firefights.
The elders of Qatar Kala insisted they had no recent contact with the Taliban, but the soldiers suspected they weren’t being truthful. Some of the villagers, the soldiers believed, had told the enemy about the meeting.
The men of 2-12, nicknamed Task Force Lethal, expect to be ambushed every time they walk up a valley — and the mission up the Watapur was no exception, said Lt. Col. Brian Pearl, the battalion commander.
“This in Kunar province is the most kinetic fight in Afghanistan right now,” Pearl said. “That’s just based on the number of engagements and what you see on a daily basis.”
Their expectation was going to prove true.
‘We’ve got eyes on the enemy’
Shortly after arriving in the village, McPherson and Airman 1st Class Tyler Miller, his radio operator and apprentice JTAC, received an intelligence report of four or five groups with about 25 or 30 suspected fighters heading in their direction.
McPherson asked the F-15Es to use their Sniper pods to scan the valley and mountains to the north, where there are suspected enemy encampments. The platoons on the ridges watched with their scopes and binoculars.
“The enemy is watching us,” McPherson said. “They watch us at all times.”
The Afghan soldiers led the way back out of the village, with the U.S. troops close behind. A few minutes later, the men of 1st Platoon began making their way off the eastern ridge.
The F-15s were flying overhead, and Conlin kept McPherson by his side for constant updates on air support and what the aircraft were seeing on the ground.
Every so often, the soldiers would stop and stand in open fields to see if the enemy would fire and show themselves. But there were no shots yet, so the F-15Es checked off and returned to Bagram.
After walking for about a half-hour, the group stopped at a farm and took up firing positions along ancient mud walls. Cows and goats grazed nearby.
McPherson, through his rifle scope, spotted a man sitting on a rock about a half-mile away.
“Hey, captain!” he said. “There’s someone over there watching us.”
McPherson had a gut feeling that the man was a spotter for the enemy but didn’t fire because he couldn’t be sure. The man got up after a few minutes and disappeared into a boulder field.
It was eerily quiet. The farmers who had been tending their fields had disappeared, never a good sign for an infantry patrol.
Then an ominous report came in: An enemy fighter was reported to have said, “It’s time for jihad. Pray for us.”
The first shots rang out a couple of minutes later, at about 8 a.m.
Reports came in that members of 1st Platoon were taking precise rifle and machine-gun fire. They were pinned down in a streambed.
The soldiers who had gone to the village ran 100 yards or so back up the valley and established positions along a wall.
“We got eyes on the enemy!” one of the soldiers with 4th Platoon shouted to Conlin, the company commander.
Two OH-58D Kiowa helicopters overhead opened fire with cannons and rockets, and made several passes on the enemy positions before pulling back. But the enemy fire continued, echoing off the valley walls.
Then soldiers back at base fired several 120mm mortar rounds, which exploded on the hillsides with a deafening roar.
The 1st Platoon soldiers were still pinned down, and Conlin worried aloud that they would begin taking casualties if the enemy fire wasn’t suppressed.
Two French air force fighter jets had checked in to the battle space, and Conlin asked McPherson how quickly he could drop a bomb on the main enemy target.
“I need air, like, yesterday!” he said.
“Understand, sir,” McPherson replied.
It took a few minutes because of the language barrier between the French pilots and the JTAC, but one of the jets dropped a 500-pound joint direct attack munition directly on the target at a little before 9 a.m. It was not clear if the bomb had any effect.
‘Cease fire! Cease fire!
The firefight continued, at times ebbing but then regaining intensity. Bullets whizzed well over the heads of the 4th Platoon soldiers, crouched safely behind a stone retaining wall.
But suddenly shots came from the other direction, snapping by the men and ricocheting off the wall at their backs. Several cursed loudly, and they all got up and ran, scrambling over loose rocks.
Half took cover in a streambed below, and the others dove into an irrigation ditch filled with muddy water. They stayed put for the better part of an hour, knowing they could take crossfire from either direction if they stood up.
The enemy had maneuvered on them, and Conlin suspected they were trying to surround his unit.
On the western ridge, Herbison, the other JTAC, spotted an enemy sniper on a hillside several hundred yards away. A sniper with 3rd Platoon fired but missed. Herbison called in an airstrike from an American F-16 that had replaced the French, but the Army commander called it off to allow AH-64 Apache attack helicopters hovering nearby to enter the fight.
The Apaches fired their cannons and rockets, but the sniper continued shooting at 4th Platoon, forcing the men to run again and take cover as bullets whizzed by them. No one was hit, but one soldier’s uniform sleeve was torn by a passing bullet.
During the barrage, Afghan National Army soldiers and their Marine Corps trainers pushed up the valley and had linked up with 1st Platoon. They returned fire with machine guns and rifles and believed they hit a few Taliban fighters.
About 10 a.m., fire once again came from an unexpected direction — but this time from behind. An Apache appeared to have inadvertently fired its cannon on a friendly position, hitting one U.S. and two Afghan soldiers.
“Cease fire! Cease fire! Cease fire!” Conlin shouted into the radio.
A medevac helicopter flew in from a nearby base, and a quick reaction force with the battalion commander made its way from Honaker-Miracle. The QRF moved the casualties in MRAP vehicles from the front line to 4th Platoon’s position, and the helicopter picked them up from there. The evacuation took a little more than an hour.
The U.S. soldier, a combat camera photographer documenting the mission, lost a leg. The conditions of the Afghans weren’t known. The Army would not comment on the possibility of friendly fire, pending the results of an investigation.
By the time of the rescue, the enemy fire was only sporadic, and the U.S. and Afghan forces began withdrawing from the valley. As they walked out through the cornfields and rice paddies, an F-16 finally dropped a 500-pound bomb on the sniper.
The soldiers were exhausted, and many were out of water. Several had to be evacuated because of dehydration and heat stroke.
They arrived back at Honaker-Miracle about 3 p.m. — 11 hours after 4th Platoon left the gates.
For now, the soldiers let the enemy disappear back into the mountains toward Pakistan. The troops’ reach doesn’t extend beyond the populated valleys, and the mountains still belong to the insurgents.
“That’s their areas, [and] if they want that, that’s fine,” said Pearl, 2-12’s commander. “We’re concentrating down with the population … and people that want change.”
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/08/af_JTAC_080909/